Backup helicopter available to Coast Guard

There will be no immediate shortage of helicopters to meet the Coast Guard’s rescue cover requirements following the crash of the Dublin-based Sikorsky S-92 in Mayo.

The helicopter was owned by CHC Helicopter, which employs the air crew on a contract to the Coast Guard.

A spokesman for CHC Helicopter, Phil Allan, said a spare helicopter was available in Ireland as backup for occasions when other machines in the Coast Guard fleet were undergoing maintenance.

He said this would most likely be now deployed to Dublin, from where the crashed helicopter operated.

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However, the company will have to replace it and will be seeking an additional helicopter of exactly the same type to function as a spare machine in Ireland so that there will continue to be four on active service with one on standby.

“It will have to be exactly the same, because all of the crews are trained on that model,” he said.

The Mayo crash represents the second incident involving a Sikorsky helicopter operated by CHC. Another one made an emergency landing near Broome, Australia, after a loss of gearbox lubricant caused gearbox problems in 2008. There were no casualties in that incident.

Fatalities

However, 13 people were killed when an Airbus (formerly Eurocopter) Super Puma H225 operated by CHC crashed in Norway in April last year.

During the initial investigation into that crash, it emerged CHC had twice successfully obtained permission to delay maintenance of the helicopter, which was then flown for a total of 200 additional hours servicing oil rigs before the maintenance was completed.

The CHC spokesman said the company had done nothing irregular in seeking the delays, which he said was an accepted normal practice.

According to a preliminary report by the Norwegian Accident Investigation Board (NAIB), the rotor blade assembly separated from the aircraft before it plunged on to a rocky island near Bergen before rolling into the sea.

A preliminary accident report blamed metal fatigue for the crash and said the NAIB continued to seek reasons for the metal fatigue. The interim report did not ascribe any connection to maintenance issues. A further official report into the crash is scheduled for the end of next month.

Following the crash, Shell removed CHC from its list of contractors engaged to fly workers to and from its Norwegian North Sea oil rigs until, it said, it was able to "reaffirm" that CHC met all necessary "operational standards".

However, CHC retained work for Shell outside of Norway. CHC was reinstated as a Shell supplier of helicopter services in less than two months, Mr Allan said.

The Airbus Super Puma H225 was grounded by the UK and Norwegian authorities although Airbus had said it did not believe a flight ban was necessary. In June, the European Air Safety Agency issued an urgent airworthiness directive which effectively grounded the H225 variant of the Super Puma throughout the world until October.

However, both the UK and Norway continue to restrict Super Puma operations despite the lifting of the flight ban elsewhere.

Restructured

Last May, CHC’s parent company became technically insolvent and entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US which gave it protection against its creditors while it was restructured. It took advantage of its Chapter 11 status to rescind lease contracts and handed back almost 100 leased helicopters to their owners. The machines were underutilised, it said, following a slump in North Sea oil activity.

Following a subsequent collapse in their price, the company's shares were delisted by the New York Stock Exchange.

In January this year, CHC lost a major North Sea contract flying to oil rigs operated by Apache Oil, which accounted for almost a fifth of its business out of Aberdeen, a major North sea helicopter hub.

CHC is expected to shortly exit Chapter 11 following a €300 million refinancing deal and the restructuring of its debt, Mr Allan said.

So far there is no indication that a flight ban, similar to that imposed on the Super Puma last year, is likely to be imposed on the Sikorsky S-92 following the Blacksod accident. A grounding usually only follows the discovery of a major flaw in an aircraft type and, despite two earlier incidents in Australia and Newfoundland involving gearbox lubrication problems, there is no evidence that this was also the cause of Mayo tragedy.

The Airbus Super Puma H225 grounding, which continued until October last year, followed a major gearbox failure which led to the entire rotor system being ejected from the aircraft.

This could be considered to be as serious as the wings falling off a commercial airliner. However, a flight ban for the Sikorsky S-92 could still be on the cards if investigators discover the crash was caused by a major safety flaw likely to be replicated on other aircraft.